


Distill, My Heart

by volunteerfd



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Alcohol, Ambiguity, Bisexual Male Character, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Friendship, Implied Femslash, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24598111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volunteerfd/pseuds/volunteerfd
Summary: The title is a cheesy play on "Be Still, My Heart."Hawkeye is trapped in a dream of old ghosts and unresolved issues. Worst of all, BJ keeps fixing these amazing beverages for him when all he wants is a terrible martini.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66





	Distill, My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something incorporating MASH's notorious timeline, its infamous anachronisms, and Hawkeye's legendary bisexuality.
> 
> It's supposed to be ambiguous if this takes places during or after the series.
> 
> The impossible references are intentional.
> 
> The disorientation, I hope, works.

Hawkeye Pierce was stuck in time.

Hawkeye Pierce had been stuck in time for a while. He would have liked to know an exact figure but he was, you know, stuck.

Before, it was very much a figurative stuckness: the same scenery, the same slop, the same surgeries, the same freezing showers. Now, to Hawkeye’s dismay, he was literally stuck in the campgrounds, with his boots firmly lodged at the ankle in hardened amber. 

The only aberration to the camp’s usual green-brown blur was the shiny patch directly beneath Hawkeye’s feet, as if someone surreptitiously planted it there while Hawkeye stood stupid and unawares.

“Aw, come on.” He clasped his hands around his leg and pulled. No give. He’d gotten pretty good at handling whatever life threw his way, but fossilized amber? He didn’t even remember coming outside. The last thing he remembered was folding himself into his small, scratchy cot after a miserable day in the O.R. Just like the hundreds, possibly thousands, possibly millions, of days before.

“Hey, Hawkeye,” Radar said cheerfully, his hands replaced by a phone and a clipboard.

“Hey, Radar. Can you help me out here?” Hawkeye ignored the distant nagging feeling that Radar wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Sure. What do you need?”

Hawkeye pointedly looked down. Radar followed his gaze, then they both looked up.

“What can I do for you?” Radar asked.

“Don’t you see my feet are stuck?”

“Oh! Yeah. It’s awfully pretty, isn’t it?”

“Not from where I’m standing.”

“It’s an easy trick. You just slowly work your way out of it. If you go too fast, you’ll sink deeper. I learned it from cartoons.”

That didn’t seem right, but nothing about this situation did. Hawkeye jostled his knees a bit, moving like a too-sober teenager at a high school dance. Eventually, the amber gave way, his feet dislodged, and he was free to go anywhere. To the mess tent, to the Swamp, to--

“Surgery! Hawkeye, we need you in surgery!” 

“Margaret?” He felt like he hadn’t seen her in years. Or he could have seen her earlier that day, in the aforementioned O.R…although, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he _had_ been in the O.R. the day before. He wasn’t sure if he’d been there in years.

“Now, Hawkeye!” 

He ran a hand through his hair. Couldn’t catch a break, not even in his dreams.

* * *

Bound by duty and instinct, he was about to dash to the operating room and try to rescue some poor kid from death. But that would get unpleasant fast, and the next morning, when he did have to hold a scalpel without nodding off, he’d be liable to fall over. No one was going to die if he shirked work and went to bed (or bed-within-bed, meta-bed), so he headed to the Swamp. 

BJ was also there, fiddling with the distillery. Hawkeye felt better to see that the surgery situation was not an all-hands-on-deck emergency. He felt better to see BJ.

“I’m lucid dreaming.” Hawkeye threw his hands up as if to say _Can you believe it?_

“I’ve never known you to be lucid. Martini?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” 

Hawkeye took a swig without a glance. It was going to be the same swill he guzzled day after day in his tent, as reliable as war, death, taxes, and BJ. 

It wasn’t a martini. It was an old fashioned. A damned good one. The type of bourbon he would have splurged on to celebrate med school graduation, a sliver of orange rind, a dark little cherry that BJ described as Luxardo. The alcohol slid smoothly down his throat, leaving just enough of a burn to let him know it was there.

And it was disgusting. He couldn’t hide his grimace.

“Jesus, where’d you get all these flavors from?” Hawkeye coughed and held the glass at arm’s length.

“Don’t you like it?” BJ’s voice had just the slightest tinge of hurt to it, undetectable to anyone who didn’t wake up and go to bed next to BJ, didn’t joke and sulk with BJ, didn’t face all the hours of life and death with BJ. Hawkeye wanted to summon Mrs. Hunnicutt and ask if she detected the tinge, or if it was just for Hawkeye to notice. He wanted to gloat in victory, _See? I noticed._

And of course, why wouldn’t BJ be hurt? Who knew what he had to trade to get the muddled sugar and Angostura bitters, what favors he had to call for the bourbon?

Actually, Hawkeye reminded himself, there were no trades and no favors, because the drink wasn’t real. Still, Hawkeye felt a pang of guilt, thinking of all the shifts BJ would have to cover, what homegrown luxuries he’d sacrificed for this one drink.

“It’s too much. I need to, you know, acclimate. Been drinking those martinis for so long. It’s like a baby eating a fajita. What’s a fajita?” Hawkeye pressed his palms against his eyes. Did he or did he not know what a fajita was and if he didn’t, then why did he say it, and if he did, then what was it?

“You’re a baby?” BJ asked. Hawkeye moved his hands to his forehead and squeezed.

“Are you supposed to have headaches in your dreams?”

“Be careful, Hawk,” BJ with his own crystal-clear martini in hand, “They say if you get a headache in your dream, you get a headache in real life.”

“Where’s that from?”

“Where’s what from?”

“That quote. You die in a dream, you die in real life…”

“It’s an old wives’ tale.”

Hawkeye shook his head. “No, it’s from a movie or something.”

“Stupid premise for a movie. I’ve died plenty of times in my dreams, but I’m still around.”

“You have?” Hawkeye asked. The thought of BJ dying, even in the privacy of his own mind, was too terrible to bear.

“Yeah, haven’t you?”

Of course he had. They were in a warzone. The revolving door of nurses, the chaplain, Margaret, even Frank was human deep down when faced with his own mortality, manifesting in sleep. “Can I get a martini?”

“Sure.” BJ held out the glass and when Hawkeye reached for it, the glass was gone, and so was the Still, and so was BJ. 

Hawkeye would have been fine with that. The strange dissolution of scenery was par for the course. He knew in his heart and mind that BJ would be back. But what appeared in BJ’s place was the stuff of nightmares. Forget bloodshed and torn limbs, nevermind the ghosts of patients too late to save. Hawkeye would trade a run-of-the-mill death dream for the sight that awaited him.

“Winchester and Burns. At the same time. Oh joy. My dream team.” 

His two nemeses were rigid in chairs, mid-card game. He couldn’t tell if their sour countenances were the result of lost money, unpleasant conversation, or just their general resting miens. 

“Team? I don’t want to pair up with this blowhard,” Charles huffed.

“Blowhard?” Frank’s hat almost flew off in indignation. “He’s a priss!” 

“He’s a lout!”

“He’s a sissy!”

“He’s gauche!”

“He uses words like ‘gauche!’” 

“Children, children, calm down,” Hawkeye put up placating hands. He was too tired for this. “It’s just a dream.”

“Yeah, _your_ dream,” Frank huffed, folding his arms and thrusting his legs out so that he was precariously slanted in his chair. “It’s always Hawkere’s dream, isn’t it?”

“Too right,” Charles agreed.

“Woah, hey, what do you mean? Literally, I’m sleeping right now, you’re in _my_ brain.”

Frank rolled his eyes. “And you’re the best surgeon in the world, you have the best adventures, and you’re always the one with the quickest remarks--”

“Now, now, speak for yourself, I’ve dispensed many witty rejoinders,” Charles interjected, at which Frank dismissively waved his hand.

“--and the one with the…” Frank hunched his shoulders to his ears and, for once, stayed silent.

“The what? The dazzling smile? The dashing good looks? The lustrous head of hair?” Hawkeye offered.

“The boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?"

“Yeah, boyfriend,” Frank spat, his hatred underlined with envy.

“Oh, you mean Beej? Tall guy, stunning eyes, we’re always laughing together, talking, helping each other out--you know, like normal, regular friends do, which you would know if you had any?”

Frank missed Hawkeye’s point entirely--quelle surprise--and switched to a wicked sneer. “What does BJ stand for, anyway?” 

“Don’t be childish,” Charles murmured, “they’re just friends.”

“Well, hey, I didn’t say that,” Hawkeye said.

“So you’re not just friends?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“Right. That would require explaining it to yourself.”

“Oh, shut up, Frasier.”

Charles furrowed his brow. “Frasier? Who--”

“I don’t know! OK? I don’t know! I don’t know who that is, or where I am, or when. And I just really need a drink right now.”

And then, miraculously, there was a drink, displayed prominently on the table in one of those tall curvy glasses with the little foot at the bottom, filled generously to the top with chocolate milkshake, then piled high with whipped cream. It looked straight out of a commercial or a TV show. It should have melted under stage lights. 

Even better, Frank and Charles and their cards had vanished as if they were never there, and BJ was back. He wanted to tell BJ about what just happened-- _hey, guess who I just ran into?--_ but the oasis of fresh dairy took priority. He sat down in front of it, fingers tapping in excitement.

“Thought I’d switch things up a bit,” BJ said.

“You’re a hero.” Hawkeye took one sip and slumped against his chair. “Mmm. Is that whole milk from a whole cow?”

“Straight from the udder.”

“And alcohol?”

“Poured with a heavy hand.”

“And real ice cream?”

“Er, define ‘real.’”

Hawkeye sat up, eager for another taste, and found that he couldn’t bring himself to put his mouth around the straw again. “You know, it’s stupid, I spent all these years here fantasizing about what I’d eat when I got home. And now that this is here, right in front of me, I can’t bring myself to…”

“But Hawkeye, you’re not home.” 

There it was, melting under the lights.

“Right. Right. I suppose you’re right.” 

“You know what they say, though.”

“‘If you die in your dream, you die in real life?’”

“‘Home is where the hard is.’”

“Where your wife and kid are.”

“I’m not there. Neither are you.”

Hawkeye swallowed, swirling the straw around in the glass, trying to appear casual. “What are you saying?”

“What _am_ I saying?”

“I’m asking you.”

“You’re the one saying it.” BJ raised a finger upward and circled it around his head, reminding Hawkeye that this was all Hawkeye’s domain, his creation. Hawkeye wanted to scream into his pillow, but that wouldn’t seem casual at all. 

He needed a walk or a meal, or maybe not a meal, given the way drinks were treating him. Not a meal, he told himself, definitely not. A shower, maybe. Even a shave or a shit. Anything but dinner.

He wound up in the mess hall.

Or, at least, what he intuitively sensed was the mess hall, even though it was a thousand times the size and smelled like workhouse smoke. There were the benches, of course, stretched to fit the new length, but the only person present was Radar, dressed in the clothes of a Victorian street urchin, straight out of a Dickens novel. He was tucked into a veritable feast of roast chicken, gravy, three different styles of potatoes, a garden of roasted vegetables, and a bowl of the yellowest, sunniest, most radioactive-looking eggs whipped into cloud-like delicacy. 

“Well, Oliver, looks like you finally got some more,” Hawkeye joked.

“What?” 

“Oliver Twist?"

Radar blinked, uncomprehending.

“Nevermind. Aren’t you supposed to be home?” 

“Yeah! Oh, I hope BJ wasn’t too upset about his daughter calling me ‘daddy.’”

Hawkeye waved Radar’s concern away. “Nah, he thought it was funny.”

“If that happened to me, I wouldn’t think it was funny,” Radar said, his voice oddly dark. No matter how bad things got, Radar’s voice was always light and bright and boyish. Hawkeye didn’t know it could drop so low. It was like a toddler with a smoker’s rasp. “If that happened to me, I would’ve socked you in the jaw.”

“Why me?”

Radar shrugged and when he responded, his voice was light again. “Because you’re here. Hey, d’you want some?” Radar gestured to a particular sumptuous-looking roast that made Hawkeye’s stomach growl. He knew that if he tasted it, it would turn to chipped beef. He knew the potatoes would dry up and the eggs would turn to powder and the vegetables would be salted and frozen and blanched to tasteless hell.

“Nah, it’s not for me. See you around, kind.”

Then Hawkeye was at the officer’s club bar, and instead of Radar, Margaret was next to him. She was mid-story, smiling in reminiscence. 

Hawkeye was tempted to grab the neon green cocktail that was unguarded in front of her, drink it and see how it suited him. Not that he would, of course. He was still, for lack of a better term, a gentleman, and he’d never grab a lady’s drink. Plus, he was still holding out for BJ’s next offering. Too hot, too cold, just right. That’s how these stories worked. 

He leaned his head in his hand, trying to look attentive even though he couldn’t follow her at all. Something about a beach, her youth, a friend. Or maybe a ski lodge, her young adulthood, a stranger. Something about silk and sensuality. Didn’t matter. He had to ask her something and this was his only opportunity. In his waking hours, he’d never be able to ask. 

He knew how it would come out. Disrespectful. Improper. Lewd, lascivious, and lecherous. Like he was asking for a sordid little fantasy to add to his file. But he didn’t mean it that way, honestly! His intentions were nothing but pure, just one human trying to seek a kinship with another. 

After a natural lull in her story, he sat up straight, or at least stopped slanting against the bar, and ventured, “Hey, Margaret, have you ever....?”

“Ever _what,_ ” Margaret snapped, as if she could read Hawkeye’s mind.

“You know.” His attempt at tact came across as an attempt at seduction. He deserved the slap she delivered. He hoped it would jolt him awake, but instead it zapped him back to the Swamp.

“Hey, Hawk. Where’ve you been?” BJ asked, continually unperturbed by Hawkeye’s comings-and-goings. 

“Out with Margaret,” Hawkeye replied glumly. 

“Want a drink?”

Hawkeye signed in resignation. “Sure.”

He took the metal shaker from BJ and put it to his lips.

He knew immediately that the metallic aftertaste did not come from the vessel but from the liquid. It was thick and savory-smoky, sensations that did not belong in a cup, let alone someone’s mouth. It tasted red. 

Hawkeye let the shaker shatter to the ground in shards of glass.

“A Bloody Mary? BJ, are you serious? In my own dream?”

BJ shrugged. “You were being so picky. Anyway, you said it was a nightmare.”

“But tomato juice and Worcestershire sauce? That’s low! Was there even any vodka in it?”

“Not a drop.”

“Gross. You’re kicking a man when he’s down. I’ve been having a rough day.”

“Day?”

“Years. Years? Has it been years?”

“Since what?”

“I don’t know. Since I had a martini.”

“You just had one.”

“Are you high? It was a--” Hawkeye looked at the ground. The spill amid the broken glass wasn’t putrid tomato juice. It was the clear thin spill of gin.

“Are you OK? You seem off lately.”

“I told you! You’re not listening to me! Is anyone listening to me? My kingdom for a listener!”

If religion’s purpose was to make people feel like they were standing on solid earth even when the ground was lava, then Father Mulcahy almost made Hawkeye a believer. But in Hawkeye’s experience, religion was the lava, and Hawkeye would rather believe in a friend than a god.

So when he found himself in the chapel, his sigh of relief wasn’t from the hope of rescue from some deity. It was from the sight of the chaplain, busying wrists deep in chapel gardening. Punching bags lined over the neat rows of flowers.

“Father! Thank God you’re here.”

Father Mulcahy looked up, hunched over a budding plant peaking out of a clod of dirt. “Hello, Hawkeye! I feel like you’re setting me up for an easy punchline.” 

“We’ll banter some other time. Listen, I’m having a terrible dream…”

“Oh, it’s not a dream,” Mulcahy responded casually, neatly spading the little plant into a hole.

“Yes. It is. Time’s going all wacky, I don’t know where I am half the time, it’s day, it’s night, it’s the future, it’s the past, it’s everything simultaneously.”

“How is that any different than reality?”

“Don’t do that to me, come on.”

“Do what to you?”

“Play mind games with me while I’m--I’m tripping.”

“You said you were dreaming.”

“I am, but it’s like I’m tripping.”

“What drugs did you take?”

“You’re not listening to me. You’re a dream.”

“Why, thank you, Hawkeye.”

Hawkeye clutched his hair again, and he wondered if he should just keep his hands there. “You’re a lot more helpful in real life, you know that, right?”

“What, exactly, is unreal about this?”

Hawkeye gestured helplessly around, trying to find an example that wouldn’t make him sound insane. The martinis were tomato juice and bourbon and milk. His feet had been fossilized in amber. Radar had feasted on a giant turkey leg. 

Hawkeye gestured at the dirt. “Look? See! There’s a garden in the chapel!”

“Well, yes, I always considered each human soul to be a flower in need of nurturing, warmth, growth, and the chapel is a place of spiritual nourishment."

Hawkeye let out a short, squawk-like scream. “Why--why can’t you help me? You’re always able to help me!” 

“What is it, exactly, that you want help with?”

 _Put a name to it. Explain it to yourself._ Hawkeye tapped his fist against his head. “I just want a martini.”

Father Mulcahy looked uncertain, as if he’d been expecting a different answer. “Er, I have some communion wine.”

Hawkeye’s mood--frantic, need to talk to someone, a grounding force--took him to the colonel’s office, smacking the doors open with his outstretched hands, barging in. 

His long stride was cut short when he saw who was at the desk. “Oh, this is gonna hurt, isn’t it.” 

“Why would it hurt?” The colonel asked.

“Because you’re dead,” Hawkeye reminded Henry Blake.

“I’m not dead. I’m as alive as you are.” The man sitting in front of Hawkeye was now Potter, and Blake was gone. Then, without Hawkeye so much as blinking, Potter was gone and Blake was in his place.

“ _I’m_ dead!” Blake said brightly. “My plane was shot down over the sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.”

“Yeah, I know, Radar told me. So what’s it like, you know…”

“Being dead?” Now it was Potter again. 

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, I’m you,” Blake mimicked BJ’s earlier gesture, his finger swirling overhead to show Hawkeye that this was his. “And you’ve never died.”

“Sure, sure.”

“What’s the matter with you, Pierce?” Potter asked. “Something on your mind?”

“How long do dreams usually last? I feel like this has been going on forever.”

“It’s only been a year,” Blake said.

Hawkeye squeezed his eyes shut. “No. No way in hell it’s been a year. It’s been ten. At least.”

Potter laughed. “A ten year dream!”

“Should I send you on rest leave or would that make things worse?” Blake joked.

“Can you two stop switching? Can you both just stay put? Charles and Frank were able to sit together, side by side.”

“How is Old Ferret Face?” Potter asked as somehow, in the same temporality, Blake asked, “Who’s Charles?”

“I. Need. A. Martini.”

“What about your distillery?” Either Blake or Potter asked.

“Don’t even ask,” Hawkeye said. “I want a martini, I get an old fashioned. A milkshake. A Bloody Mary. Can you believe that?”

“Is something wrong with the Still?” neither Blake nor Potter said. 

Hawkeye blinked. He responded after a long moment. “Nothing’s wrong with the Still. The Still is fine.”

“Good, ‘cuz that old contraption meant a lot to me. I don’t want your new roommate messing it up, having it make Bloody Marys.”

“You. Left. It. Remember?” Hawkeye asked, stabbing the air with each word. He reigned himself in. “The Bloody Marys were a prank.”

“By your new roommate?”

“My new best friend.”

“Ouch. You wound me.” 

“ _I_ wound _you?_ You didn’t leave a note. You never sent a letter.”

It felt good to finally say that to Trapper, even though it wasn’t really to Trapper, and he wasn’t really saying it, and it didn’t really feel good. 

When Hawkeye imagined running into Trapper again, he envisioned two different scenarios: the one that just happened--a cutting remark, his hurt and anger naked and on full display--or, like a cat running into a door, pretending like it never happened. That he didn’t even recognize Trapper. That he didn’t care.

Hawkeye wanted to stop imagining it, period.

Trapper shrugged, meaning to absolve himself of guilt and Hawkeye of self-blame. “I didn’t want to remember this.”

“You didn’t want to remember me.”

“You’re part of this.” 

Hawkeye closed his eyes and inhaled. If the roles had been reversed...If he’d managed to ditch when Trapper had. To have fewer years to shake and shed. If he could take the memories off like a pair of gloves, a surgical mask, toss them in the garbage because they could not be used again. They were too dangerous to reuse, contaminated by blood and breath.

He wouldn’t have been able to. “It’s part of me,” Hawkeye admitted. A package deal. He had to live with it. Trapper didn’t.

No, that wasn’t true, Hawkeye shook his head furiously. These fucking mind games, the mental tricks. Trapper couldn’t pull one over on him. “You were _here._ Same as me. We were both here. For a week, for a minute, you were here _._ You can’t honestly believe that you could go home and be home and pretend you never left.”

“No,” Trapper agreed, “but I can try.”

“BJ kept in touch,” Hawkeye said, but he didn’t know if that was true or not. “I mean, he _will_ keep in touch.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Fuck you.”

“What? You thought I would, and I didn’t, but hey, life goes on. It went on.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“With _me?_ ”

“Yeah, with you. There’s something wrong with you.” Hawkeye stormed out before he could say more.

And he was back at the Swamp again, only this time it was an actual damn room--four upstanding walls and room to walk. It was dim, but with intent: low lighting and candles. Mood lighting, not the darkness of power outages and blackouts.

BJ was in the middle, looking smug in a suit. A real suit, not the formal military garb they had to box themselves in. A suit a civilian would wear to weddings and bar mitzvahs and funerals and whatever this was.

“Don’t--what is this?” Hawkeye dared to ask as a woman’s voice crooned softly in the background.

“It’s your dream.”

“You sap. It’s so corny. What, are you going to propose to me? If I’d known, I would have borrowed something from Klinger.” The jokes and deflections rolled out of Hawkeye’s mouth without pause for breath.

“Sorry, do you hate it?” BJ asked, knowing full well that Hawkeye didn’t.

“Eh," Hawkeye shrugged one shoulder.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” BJ held up a finger with one hand and held out the other, presenting, finally, a martini.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Hawkeye grabbed it and held it up, examining it from every angle. “And when I drink it, what’s it gonna taste like?”

“Fire and paint thinner."

“Mm. That’s exactly what it tastes like.”

“So…”

“So…” Hawkeye echoed.

“So what’s gonna happen?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know if I’m gonna wake up in an army-issued cot or in a cheap bed, in Korea or Crabapple Cove or Mill Valley. I don't know if it's going to be 1953 or 1975 or the '80s or 2000 or two years or ten years or a hundred. I feel like we had forty Christmases here--"

"Woah, woah, slow down. What would you be doing in Mill Valley?”

“What would I be doing in Crabapple Cove or Korea?”

Hawkeye stared at the glass, into the glass, as if he could dredge the drink and read the drops for answers like tea leaves. "You know, I never want to drink one of these again, but if I'm never able to have one again, I don't know what I'd do."  
  
"We could set something up stateside."

"I suppose...'We?'"

"It's a two man operation, isn't it?"

"Is this me? Or is this you?"

BJ pointed upward and twirled his finger. The candles weren't dripping. 

"Great," Hawkeye muttered.

"But," BJ said, "it could also be me. You could find out."

Hawkeye huffed a laugh. "Yeah, and then you'll turn tail so fast that--" He didn't want to finish his thought, _You'd_ _make Trapper look like a tortoise._

"But I haven't. I didn't. I won't."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Hawkeye said, draining his glass.

"Hold me to whatever you want."

Hawkeye swirled the magically replenished liquid, then turned it topside on the ground. It turned into dry blackness. 

"See you around?"

"See you around."

And then--it was so fucking simple, so stupidly easy--he woke up, and he knew where he was.


End file.
